Tips & Strategies (75)

Sentinels is a complicated game (as @Takras recently pointed out). If you’re not invested in it, I’m sure it’s quite tedious. And when you first pick it up, it can be nearly overwhelming. The first and best strategy to helping a newcomer get into the game is to make sure you’re playing with the least complicated heroes, villains and environments (@Alston’s tip about playing against Baron Blade in Megalopolis does the trick, and using heroes like the Wraith and Tempest will ease things a little more).

But even doing this, I’m about 50/50 on first-timers being willing to play again. This makes me look for adjustments I can make to the rules for the first 5 or so games to not overwhelm them… but these are very hard concessions to make, as the game makes so much sense as it is, and tweaking at all can detract from the top-notch theme.

The one rule I’ve become willing to disregard for the benefit of a new player’s sanity is the Nemesis rule. It does take a little something away from the game if Baron Blade and Legacy aren’t doing +1 damage to each other, but it also gives that new player one less chance to say “What’s this? ANOTHER arbitrary rule to remember? OK, that’s all for me.”

At the end of the day, I want more people to play this great game with. Getting them up to speed before throwing out “so… did you notice these little symbols in the bottom right corner? Guess what they do…” helps a little bit.

With an entire Multiverse at your fingertips and so many expansions to sort and explore – we have a very important rule in our household:

NO PEEKING!

Sure flip through the hero decks to get a feel for your Sentinels and check out the new archetypes the Greater than Guys are bringing to the table. A Sentinel is always ready!

But one of the iconic points of Comicdom is the ‘First Appearance’ of a new Villain in the cannon. Heroes scramble, the battle is heated, and things are tense. Who is this new person ready to wreak havoc…and better still, what havoc can they wreak exactly??

We keep all Villains and Environments a complete mystery -they are unwrapped and sorted and very sacredly and secretly placed against their divider with a sense of wonder and awe, so our first time out – it is an exciting, mysterious, and tense experience.

Nothing beats a First Appearance !!!

’nuff said!

And we usually take a heavy whupping – but we lick our wounds, adjust our team, and plan a strategy with what we’ve learned and keep on defending the Multiverse.

(With a nod the the Grand Master of the Multiverse @Grysqrl’s tip Hero Turn Order)

For various reasons – newbie intro, a more tactical and social game, just a general feeling of hero team-up – we usually break the rule of round-the-table play during the collective Hero Phase.

Heroes don’t normally leap into battle in the order they were sitting around the dining room table at HQ when the Big Call came in – and they certainly don’t stick to a stringent and static order in the heat of battles in paneldom.

When it comes to the Hero Phase – we normally just pow-wow a bit and then take to the fight in any given order we choose that round. Since we are battling dastardly decks – there’s really no one around to complain.

Sometimes the cards let you jump into the fray and sometimes they whisper to hang back a bit. Things feel more tactical, co-op, and social, and heroes are able to play better off other heroes.

And it helps a great deal when The Matriarch starts turning the table into a Hitchcock set.

For me, Citizen Dawn was the most challenging of the four villains provided in the base game. It took a few frustrating loses to her and her Citizens to realize that I was misplaying her invulnerable “Merged With the Power of the Sun” side.

This side of her character card states that it can’t be flipped back to her more favorable “Leader” side until she has 3 Citizens in play at the start of her turn. I initially read this to mean I needed to draw 3 Citizens from her deck before Dawn will flip back (essentially giving the villains 3+ turns to damage the heroes without a response).

However, Citizen Dawn herself counts as one of the 3 Citizens… meaning you only need to draw 2 Citizens out of her deck in order to flip her back. Game designer Christopher Badell confirmed this on BGG.

I still find her to be the most challenging of the core villains, but I’m much more successful against her now.

cleave29’s tip below actually isn’t a legal play. Wrest the Mind cannot be played on a character card (i.e. the main villain, other heroes, and a few exceptions like the Operative).

There is another nice two-card combo that you can use:
-Play Twist the Ether on Visionary, allowing you to change her damage type and boost or lower it by 1.
-Play Wrest the Mind on a non-character villain or environment target
-When the target of Wrest the Mind deals damage, you can redirect it to the villain (or whatever target you like). Twist the Ether then allows you to reduce the damage that Visionary does to herself and to the Wrested target (making it survive longer). Or increase the damage to the Wrested target if you want to kill it faster.

This is primarily useful on targets that deal large, single-instance damage (e.g. 5 damage to a single target rather than 1 damage to each target) since it costs Visionary HP to use Wrest.

If you are looking to purchase this game, look up the Enhanced Edition instead of the original. The additional content includes:
– A large number of tokens and tags to track damage and effects.
– The box itself was designed to hold the entire game AND the two expansions in the same box
– Dividers for the base game and all the expansions.
– Slight adjustments on cards to adapt to changing numbers of players

This seems like standard fare, but remember this was a kickstarter project that took off. I am impressed with the publisher that they took the time to improve their already impressive product.

We usually play 2 person games, as there are usually only two people in our house (one adult, one 10 year old). We’ve decided that for two people, in order to make the game not a complete slaughter against the heroes, we need to finagle the rules bit.

So for two people, we draw a villain card every other round, instead of every round, and double the number of powers each hero can use per turn. It may make it a bit too easy, but we are playing with kids.

We are still quite new to the game, so as we gain more experience we may alter these house rules to make it more challenging again, but so far this works for us.

As critics of the game have said, keeping track of all the beginning turn, end turn, immunities and what not can be intimidating and slow down the game flow. To combat this, a few markers on the table can help players visualize what’s going on.

First, the enhanced edition comes with a number of tokens and chits that address all the games conditions that can be placed on or near the cards the effect. Greater Than Games also sells these individually (at this time of this writing they are out of stock however). I have found having the most experienced player manage these tokens as players go about their actions makes a big difference.

To make this even better, having a good storage solution makes set up, finding the necessary item and tear down much smoother as well. I recommend something like the following item:

to mix up games a little get a marker for first player
give it to the first player after the villain, play the first round as normal then hand the first player marker to the next player.
when its the heroes turn to act again, the player with the marker goes first, then all the heroes in sequence, looping back around to the player after the villain, (who had the villain in the first round)

Often, this game appears to be the heroes battling against the villain and the environment. Looking at the specifics on the environment cards and thinking through some future situations can provide some opportunities for the heroes to gain an ADVANTAGE from their surroundings instead of just penalties.

Some environment cards deal damage to the “highest/lowest” hp target. This is usually not just hero targets. By allowing these to remain on table and even inflict damage on heroes a few times, you may gain a huge net benefit when those attacks redirect towards the villain and/or minions.

Similarly, some environment cards add damage bonuses. Most of the time, the heroes will have more total attacks than the villain and his crew. Overall, the good guys will deal more damage than they receive.

This “gaining an advantage from your surroundings” element is another great example of how this game keeps true to comic books. Many superheroes would have fallen if they had not used their wits to capitalize on what their environment supplied.

Legacy is a great character. He can be a hard hitter if necessary but is usually better as support. Try to position him first in your group. Galvanize is an amazing power and should be used every turn without fail. The Amount of damage adding galvanize can do is incredible. Paired with hit all targets for one (e.g Tachyons hypersonic assault) this can be a way to quickly take out large groups. Even on a single target, Galvanize will double Fanatics innate power.
Inspiring presence is also a must, that 2 to every target is now three and suddenly Voss and Dawns minions aren’t a problem.
If you can get a Legacy ring and Motivational charge in play as well you’ll start to wonder if losing is even possible, no matter which other heroes are in your team.
If you know there’s a big hit coming up, cards like heroic interception will save your heroes.
Lead from the front depends on your play style, I like to use it to keep low HP hero targets (Unity’s bots) in play longer.
And if you have all the support cards in play and time to kill, Legacy can do a decent amount of damage with his one shots as well.

Are you finding everybody’s favorite time-traveling, thieving pirate too much to handle? Be sure that you focus fire on her ship. Most “draw the top card of the villian deck” can be a nuisance to the heros, but with La Capitan’s deck it is downright deadly.

With her ship in play, she is able to bring out her crew and some masty* ongoing cards much more quickly then you can say, “Walk the plank!” Make sure you drop that boat to the bottom of Davy Jones’s locker… or his space-and-time equivalent’s locker.

Of the environments included in the base game, Megapolis is the most forgiving. Choose this environment for all new groups of players. It will give them the best chance of success and not turn them away from the game. Our group started with the Ruins of Atlantis, and one player, who kept getting choked by a persistent Kraken, did not appear too thrilled to play again.

In order to maintain sanity, I recommend designating one player of your party to keep track of the villain and another to keep track of the environment. Splitting up the work load can really allow the game to be streamlined. Often if everyone is just peripherally aware, something might get missed…then you have to backtrack. This game can have a ton of effects in play at any given time. Simplify the game by designating duties.

The next time you play as Mr. Fixer or the Naturalist in Time Cataclysm, be on the lookout for Fixed Point. Both of these characters use a one-mode-at-a-time mechanic (Forms for Naturalist and Styles and Tools for Mr. Fixer) where playing a new mode card destroys existing modes (or returns them to your hand, in the case of the Tools). Fixed Point prevents this resulting removal of cards already on the board, allowing you to have multiple modes out simultaneously.

-Jack Handle + Dual Crowbars = 2 strikes against all non-hero targets
-Alternating Tiger Claw + Riveting Crane + Jack Handle gives you and all of your teammates irreducible damage against everything on the board
-Crocodile Form + Rhino Form + Gazelle Form = an unstoppable beast that benefits from all icons on all of Naturalist’s cards

Next time you see Fixed Point come up, try it out. Just make sure you don’t play one of your mode cards after Fixed Point goes away or they will all be destroyed.

I will always start the villain as Baron Blade in Megolopolis. I think that this is one of the easiest setups. It provides a little bit of a challenge without making it super easy.
For the second game, I like to do the opposite. Citizen Dawn in the Wagner Mars Base. This provides a very hard opponent and environment that is sure to band together the heroes. If they lose then they immediately want to play again. Having that early win keeps then involved, having the lose makes them want to win the next time.

If you want a more thematic feel to the game, randomize the setup. If you know the game well enough, odds are you can pick a group of heroes and an environment that are favorable for beating any given villian. However, if everything is randomized, you just have to take what you are given and jump right in.

If there was a real crisis, would you sit around and decide who would be the best people to fight the villian and then send a letter to the villian asking him to meet you at the location you selected? No, you would send whoever was available to meet him wherever he was wreaking havoc.